Keith Mayerson's installations of drawings and paintings are beautiful, fascinating and ambitious works that attempt to create a whole world in which his vivid imagination can run free. With humor Mayerson balances queer fantasy and concern over issues of gay identity. In looking at his work no one is hit over the head with politics, although there's enough there to make the right wing want to secede from the rest of the country.

The images presented here are from his latest installation, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." A literal body of work, 107 pieces make up the entire installation and are hung salon style in seven distinct series, offering astounding proof of Mayerson's remarkable facility with oil paint, watercolor, ink, pencil and charcoal.

Each series has a different mood and features different main characters. Mayerson layers and stacks images in a sort of free for all of association, mixing middle American fantasies of the boy next door with wild gay fantasies of the man who got away. The comic book character Archie and the film star Keanu Reaves make appearances as cultural role models with whom Mayerson either identifies or upon whom he is obsessed.

As a whole his story boards present a kind of ambiguity regarding the complex factors that make every queer different from another and alike at the same time. Perhaps this is the key to the title of this series. Mayerson seems to say that we are all made up of a little bit of both Heaven and Hell; somewhere between these two worlds is where we reside.

Arnold J. Kemp

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," 1994
Group X 3 of 11 (Archie)
Watercolor on paper
14.5 x 36 inches

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"
1994
Group IV 6 of 10 (Archie)
Watercolor on paper
12 x 8.75 inches

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"1994
Group X 3 of 11 (Archie)
Watercolor on paper
14.5 x 36 inches

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"1994
Group VII 5 of 16 (Keanu Sighting)
Watercolor and ink on paper
16 x 14 inches

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"1994
Group IV 9 of 10 (Keanu Sighting)
Watercolor and ink on paper
16 x 14 inches

"The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"1994
Group VII 11 of 16 (Maladoror)
Charcoal on paper
12 x 14.5 inches